DxWnd / Discussion / General Discussion: Wings of Destiny " "could not read animation format" fatal exception error on start

agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04

Hi Gho

okay this one might be too little known a game - a flight sim/arcade action game Wings of Destiny (2000) from Psygnosis/Dice - i got the discs for this recently and it installs fine, but then once i start the game it starts loading but then crashes with the error "could not read animation format".

In the manual it says the game will run some into animations and i think there are "comic book" style animations throughout the game possibly. It might be these that are in the unreadable format, but i just dont know how i can confirm whether this or something else the cause is.

I am running windows 10 64bit, i have tried a few DGvoodoo settings but to no avail, same with dxwnd. what might one need to have possibly older early 2000s animation formats recognised? is that was codecs might take care of?

i am wondering if though there might be someway to get around or have plaed these supposedly unreadable animations.

the odd thing too is that i presume it is just the introduction movies that are having this issue, - they are in the main game folder as 2 avi files and if i select to play them outside of the game, they run fine, so i dont know why the error message is coming up

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gho - 2020-06-04

Damn, I got the game, inserted CD1, run SETUP.EXE and the installer is again running in background doing nothing at all forever. Then, I'm sure, sooner or later it will start to work, but why this thing happens so often on Win10?

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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04

i have windows 10 and the game installed fine - what i had to do though was switch off my anti-virus and i set the exe to run as admin (i think i may also put the comp to winxp - but i am not sur ethats necessary)

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gho - 2020-06-04

Uff, at last ... probably the problem is here:

AVIStreamOpenFromFileA: pavi=0xdd464 file="attic walk2.avi" fcctype=0x73646976("vids") lparam=0 mode=0

the file "attic walk2.avi" exists and is playable with VLC Player, but probably the game tries to use some unsupported codec, who knows ... anyway, the last track about this is here:

AVIStreamGetFrameOpen: pavi=0x4fa26bc lpbiwanted=0x49d204 bitcount=24

there is no error indication, but I have to check the logging code and if I hooked all the used calls. It will take a while, I'll be back with some news.

error.png
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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04

okay great, i really hope you can get this one fixed that would be massive!

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gho - 2020-06-04

Thanks to OllyDBG, here's the error: one call of AVIStreamReadFormat returns error code 8004406A (AVIERR_BADPARAM). Now teh difficult part: fixing it.

error3.png

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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04

interesting and is this something having a certain codec for would have fixed? i mean, how come people can get this game working in windows 95 and 98 ?

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- gho - 2020-06-04
  
  Probably (I'm not an expert about codecs and audio/video streaming) either these codecs were installed by default on Win95/98 or they are installed by the game setup but the codec registration fails on Win10. I recall that Huh succeeded in many cases finding the proper codec and the way to register it manually on Windows. Hopefully Huh is reading and could give some help.
  On my part, I think I could make a bypass, something that ignores the error code and let the game continue, though without video or audio streaming.
  
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gho - 2020-06-04

Hey!!! Guess what? Use this patched dll .... :)

dxwnd.wod.rar

fix_2.png

fix_3.png

fix_4.png

fix_5.png

fixed.png

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- huh - 2020-06-04
  
  Yes, I'm reading it. I'll try, but I'm having some trouble finding this game. I'll be back in about three hours and look at it. In the meantime, I see that you have solved something, but if I understand correctly, this solution has disabled videos? Well, I have to leave now.
  
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  - gho - 2020-06-04
    
    AFAIK there's only one place, I'll tell you where....
    But don't hurry, the fix has nothing to do with unsupported codecs, it just fixes a sort of programming bug in the original game, so the fix shows both audio and video.
    The ingame setup is not working, if you click on the setup / settings button the game crashes. Well, something still to do for the boring nights ;)
    I got to exit too now, see ya later ...
    
    Last edit: gho 2020-06-04
    
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    - huh - 2020-06-04
      
      Well, in the end I got a copy (probably elsewhere), but it was difficult. These avi "attic walk.AVI" "attic walk2.avi" and also the avi in "Movie Files" folder (except menuallied.avi and menuaxis.avi) are very special.
      They contain quite the common codec MS Video1, but in their structure they have only the character 80 00 (hex), so when playing it is a black image.
      When I trying to play via mplayer, this status is...
      Starting playback...
      Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
      Opening video filter: [scale]
      Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
      [swscaler @ 00000000022d2380]bicubic scaler, from rgb555le to yuv420p using MMXE
      XT
      VO: [directx] 640x400 => 640x400 Planar YV12
      Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
      VO: [directx] 640x400 => 640x400 Planar YV12
      V: 0.0 1/ 1 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
      Exiting... (End of file)
      
      In addition, these files appear aka binary same (I don't know if they all). As for the start of the game, so game probably looking for English\setup.wcs and English\serial.wcs.
      I don't have these files in this version, I don't know if it's important. I have also crash when I click Setup. Enough for today.
      
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gho - 2020-06-04

The exact reason for the crash seems to be in some bug. Let's see. This is the call:

HRESULT AVIStreamReadFormat( PAVISTREAM pavi, LONG lPos, LPVOID lpFormat, LONG *lpcbFormat );

MS docs here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/vfw/nf-vfw-avistreamreadformat
about lpcbFormat, this is a pointer to a LONG word that contains the size of the lpFormat buffer and will hold the size of the lpFormat returned structure when the call returns successfully. DxWnd logs show that the call fails because the initial value of *lpcbFormat was -1, which doesn't make sense. Intercepting this situation and replacing -1 with 0 let the game continue. Probably this has always happened, but earlier versions of avifile.dll tolerated this mistake.
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- agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04
  
  According to a thread on vogons about wings of destiny, their seems to be
  some CFG file that gets created that one can change which can get around
  the need to go to the setup screen
  
  How though can I get past the intro movies firstly? If I can play the game
  I will at least be happy somewhat
  
  Last edit: gho 2020-06-05
  
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  - agathosdaimon - 2020-06-04
    
    Okay sorry missed the post from Gho with the fix, I will try that one.
    Hopefully the weird setup crash is fixable , thanks for this and glad you
    could find a copy of this strange little title - I don't really understand
    why it came out with so little mention at the time and right round when
    psygnosis had Nations WW2 fighters command come out also
    
    Last edit: gho 2020-06-05
    
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gho - 2020-06-04

About the crash when entering the setup menu choice, the crash happens while the program is trying to handle this string:

9600 14400 19200 38400 56000 57600 115200 128000 256000

The string is not terminated after 256000 but follows with a huge number of other meaningless numbers, and the game crashes while trying to copy this neve-ending sequence somewhere.
My guess is that the game is trying to build the list of the serial line speeds, but it uses a small buffer that is not big enough to hold all the "modern" high speeds, so the string terminator is overwritten. If I find how the game gets the list of all available speeds, it should be sufficient to limit the maximum value to fit the list in the buffer and fix the problem.
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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-05

hi Gho - do you have any other info on how to get flying - i put your dxwnd.dll in the main folder and the game runs in a window - i can get ot where i am to start the first mission, but then it crashes to desktop and closes

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- agathosdaimon - 2020-06-05
  
  Never.mind I got it working by having it set to win98 company mode
  
  Last edit: gho 2020-06-05
  
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huh - 2020-06-05

@gho, agathosdaimon
Yesterday, I was thinking about that these avi were created artificially for this RIP version to save space. What is you size of "attic walk.AVI" and "attic walk2.avi"? You have files setup.wcs and serial.wcs in the English folder?

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- gho - 2020-06-05
  
  I started from a full 2CD game, no RIP here. I also extracted the two audio tracks with bchunk.exe and set CD audio emulation, though I don't think it played so far.
  File sizes are 44.028kb and 15.435kb (exactly 45,084,672 bytes and 15,804,480 bytes).
  p.s. use oldgamesfinder ...
  
  Last edit: gho 2020-06-05
  
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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-05

okay i got it going - i put the game in win98 compat mode however one thing that is bugging is that once the game starts the sound for the game gets muted when i start the mission - i can move the mouse over to unmute the game, but this only works once, if i do another mission and its muted again, if i try to unmute the game will crash.

do you have fix in dxwnd for this to stop it messing with its own volume settings - really weird thing, i have never encountered a game do such thing before

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huh - 2020-06-05

Ok, my avi are bad. I know about oldgamefinder, but I don't have a 4shared account and I don't want to create one any time soon. Could anyone upload these two avi? °° Thank you.
Anyway, I think the game draws texts on surface videos from the "Movie Files" folder.

°°You can use https://ulozto.net/ for upload it's free without registration and it is possible to generate a private download link.

Update:
Now I've tried it in Win98 and it works even with bad videos. Damn!

Last edit: huh 2020-06-05

wingsw98.jpg

wingsw98d3d.jpg

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- gho - 2020-06-05
  
  @Huh: have you tried my patched dxwnd.dll yet? It's strange that it fixes the game for everybody except you.
  Second thing: since you successfully entered the setup screen (shown in your first screenshot above) could you try to switch the tabs? My forecast is that in the "Multiplayer" tab there should be a rolling selector with speed numbers. Please, take a screenshot, I need to know how these numbers (like 9600, 14400 etc.) are labeled (serial port speed? IPX? internet?). Please, take a screenshot that shows the biggest number in the list.
  Debugging the game, I saw that the crash occurs in a procedure used presumably to build the list of values to be managed in these selectors. In fact, the procedure managed pointers to strings like "DirectDraw", "Direct3D", ... "800*600*32" ... and finally "9600", "14400", ... until the crash.
  
  P.s. I tried the game with Win98 compatibility too, but it crashes the same. I think that it should depend on my hardware that support a greater number of whatever speeds.
  
  for the movies, try this: https://ulozto.net/tamhle/yVqySfcIZCWP
  
  Last edit: gho 2020-06-05
  
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  - huh - 2020-06-05
    
    Well, maybe I wrote little about it, your fixed dll fixes the entry into the game for me too.
    What doesn't work for me is that entering to setup (probably does not work for everyone?).
    
    could you try to switch the tabs?
    
    I think I will get to the computer with Win98 at the earliest on Monday, hopefully you can handle it..
    I am attaching LastSavedStatus file as an appetizer.
    This file was generated in the root folder of the game when I set up D3D in Win98.
    The game will run in D3D. I have some texture flaws here, but it can be a good start.
    
    P.S.
    Thanks for the videos, I'll grab it. However, the game worked on Win98 with my dummy videos from the rip version, so the person who created them had to know what he was doing.
    
    P.s. I tried the game with Win98 compatibility too,
    
    Don't be fooled, this was a physical computer with Windows 98 :-)
    
    Last edit: huh 2020-06-05
    
    LastSavedStatus.7z
    
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agathosdaimon - 2020-06-06

hi guys - i am encountering an issue with the british campaign - i am using ghos patched dxwnd.dl - the game will crash 10-15 secs into the first mission starting. hoping you can find out what is causing this

also still the weird issue with the sound muting as soon as a mission starts - extremely weird, - i have to unmute it frhte volume control outside the game each.

why oh why was this game made so many weird side

-update, it seems if i play the axis mission first then play te allied campaign it wont crash

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Wings of Destiny " "could not read animation format" fatal exception error on start

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Wings of Destiny " "could not read animation format" fatal exception error on start